It has nothing to do with Indian citizens? A law passed in India does not concern Indian citizens? I am not sure I can make sense of what you are saying.
If you are saying that the law does not affect current citizens, then, I want to say that It does not have to to justify the protests. Because the protests are about how it drags religion into how citizenship is granted.
It discriminates people based on religion.
That itself, without going into anymore details, is enough reason to protest against it.
Now, there are some arguments that say we already have different laws for different religion casts etc. But that argument is shallow, misguided at best, blatantly malicious at worst.
Because such things are there because the idea of being secular overrides even having consistent laws. Because it allows people to practice their religion.
In other cases, were certain reservations are provided to people of certain cast, they are merly to target a subset of population that was victim of a bad cast system in the past.
You can see that both of these ideas are very much in the spirit of secularism, and in first case, even overrides the need for consistent laws.
This bill shatters that very idea, like to its core.
In a set of people in which all members have same attributes, except for their religion, it makes it much easier for people from certain religion to obtain citizenship.
Now, one can argue that the religion filter, as we saw in the second case above, is meant to target people who were fleeing from religious persecution. But that argument also does not help here. Because then it only helps people who are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Hindu, and it does not help if you are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Muslim.
And why drag religious persecution into the whole thing anyway, people are made to suffer for various reasons in a lot of places, many of which does not have to do with religion.
No, this "religious persecution" thing is a very clever way to mask the actual intent behind this act. And in fact, this religious persecution clause is not even present in the actual law [1].
>> It discriminates people based on religion.
>> Now, there are some arguments that say we already have different laws for different religion casts etc. But that argument is shallow, misguided at best, blatantly malicious at worst.
I respectfully submit that your argument is even shallower.
There are separate personal laws for different communities, all non-Hindu communities have exemptions under various laws (Right to Education being one particularly damaging example, the Endowment Acts being another).
All these laws discriminate against and put the majority community at a disadvantage vs. the minorities.
>> Because such things are there because the idea of being secular overrides even having consistent laws. Because it allows people to practice their religion.
This principle has allowed the policy-making process to be hijacked by vote-bank politics, in which every two-bit political party outdoes itself to woo minorities by offering sops, at the expense of the majority. Case-in-point: The Trinamool and Mamta Bannerjee.
>> Because then it only helps people who are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Hindu, and it does not help if you are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Muslim.
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are Muslim-majority countries. By definition, you cannot be fleeing religious persecution. Offered without evidence: The only Muslim immigrants from these countries are economic immigrants, and there is no humanitarian imperative to offer them citizenship.
>> No, this "religious persecution" thing is a very clever way to mask the actual intent behind this act. And in fact, this religious persecution clause is not even present in the actual law [1].
The act is a set of directions to the government machinery. It does not have to explain itself, and certainly does not have to contain the words "religious persecution".
It has nothing to do with Indian citizens? A law passed in India does not concern Indian citizens? I am not sure I can make sense of what you are saying.
If you are saying that the law does not affect current citizens, then, I want to say that It does not have to to justify the protests. Because the protests are about how it drags religion into how citizenship is granted.
It discriminates people based on religion.
That itself, without going into anymore details, is enough reason to protest against it.
Now, there are some arguments that say we already have different laws for different religion casts etc. But that argument is shallow, misguided at best, blatantly malicious at worst.
Because such things are there because the idea of being secular overrides even having consistent laws. Because it allows people to practice their religion.
In other cases, were certain reservations are provided to people of certain cast, they are merly to target a subset of population that was victim of a bad cast system in the past.
You can see that both of these ideas are very much in the spirit of secularism, and in first case, even overrides the need for consistent laws.
This bill shatters that very idea, like to its core.
In a set of people in which all members have same attributes, except for their religion, it makes it much easier for people from certain religion to obtain citizenship.
Now, one can argue that the religion filter, as we saw in the second case above, is meant to target people who were fleeing from religious persecution. But that argument also does not help here. Because then it only helps people who are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Hindu, and it does not help if you are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Muslim.
And why drag religious persecution into the whole thing anyway, people are made to suffer for various reasons in a lot of places, many of which does not have to do with religion.
No, this "religious persecution" thing is a very clever way to mask the actual intent behind this act. And in fact, this religious persecution clause is not even present in the actual law [1].
And people are calling it out en masse.
[1] http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/214646.pdf